What's In A Name
by cazzi
Summary: 'Ada Wong' finally had a quiet moment after Raccoon City. However, it would be her last. An introspection, inspired by Ada's RE3 epilogue. Warning: violence


**Author's note:** **This short story was my love letter to Ada Wong. Inspiration taken from her appearance in the og and remake RE2, her epilogue in RE3 and her backstory in the RE manhwa. I also took some courtesy with the Forgotten Soldier dlc ending. I wanted to do my girl justice and explore her most vulnerable moments to show who Ada Wong is at heart: just a girl trying to survive. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil and any of its characters.**

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Hours later, she was finally alone, albeit in a hotel before her transport could be arranged. Her wounds, treated and bandaged, were still sending throbs throughout her body, constant reminders of her carelessness underneath that hell of a city. The bed looked uncomfortable, covered in plain white sheets. One would think The Organization treats their spies well with luxury after successful missions, but as she was told, '_this is all we could offer due to short notice_'. If she was honest with herself, Ada wanted nothing more than to sink into the cheap mattress that would probably leave her back sore in the morning. But she hadn't really been honest for the past hours (even to herself, she scoffed), so why start now?

With more effort than she thought she would need, Ada Wong got into the bathroom and started to unzip her dress. She hissed as the slight twist of her body sent shots of pain from the bruises on her side, from when her body collided with that damn metal ledge on her way down the bottomless pit of the NEST. She remembered frantically reaching for her hook shot, her fall was too fast, she was dizzy from the blood loss and gravity. She pulled the trigger and felt her arms almost dislocating with the sudden pull, but years of training became the instinct that kicked in and she angled her body so that she flew with the momentum of it, crashing into a metal ledge and her side hurt like a son of a bitch, but there was no time, she tried to hold on but everything around her was falling, collapsing and if she wasn't careful she would be-

The walkway she was struggling to climb up let out a screech and dislocated. It took her breath with it, and Ada braced for a violent collision with whatever was below. Water. She would be glad if she didn't have to immediately swim to avoid all the debris that fell with her. It was with skill and a serious miracle that she made it out alive, however, at the first real breath she was able to take, Ada immediately looked for her real key to escape: the sample. Still there as she left it, snugly fit in a strap within her inventory.

_Just when she thought things were starting to get out of hand, luck and irony came to her like two sides of the same coin, in the form of an Umbrella soldier. She heard the poor bastard from inside the cable car and hid herself amongst the crates. He stumbled into the cabin and rushed for the controls with the desperation of a man who had just a little too many close encounters with death. A pity for him, she was desperate too. Although, the source of her desperation went beyond death. Because if it came down to it, she wasn't sure if she could kill the RPD rookie for the sample he would bring her. Now she no longer had to choose, it was much easier to point her gun at this stranger's head and demanded what had to be hers._

"_P-please…I just want to get out of here! It was my first mission, I didn't know this would happen, I'm so sorry!'' He was bleeding heavily from the side, red gushing from three deep slashes and she knew it was from one of those tongued freaks, knew this man didn't have much time left. Another rookie who was thrown into hell against his will. Ada shut that train of thought, she had enough doubts for one night._

"_I won't say it again. Give me the sample.'' She kept her tone cool, almost airy despite the smell of iron becoming thicker in the claustrophobic cable car. That's just how Ada Wong was, how she should be._

_He struggled with shaking fingers to free the vial strapped to his vest and gave it to her. She checked it, then with her mission objective secured, said_

"_Sorry about this.'' And she pulled the trigger._

_The stench of blood and death intensified, so thick in the air she could almost taste it. But she was used to it. She just hoped Leon wouldn't come back to the cable car for her anytime soon._

_She took the ID wristband that glowed purple from the rookie's corpse. Perhaps to spare Leon the trouble, she would come to him. They could meet halfway._

_She didn't want him to see this side of her world._

Ada pulled the dress down her legs. It was grimy and dirty, just like the rest of her. She liked the dress; it was the perfect outfit to go about a little infiltration and theft with style. Perhaps not so much for fighting for her life to escape an infested city, but she has never been one to back down from a challenge. She made it in the end, with more than a scratch admittedly, but her mission was a success. Ada Wong did it again. That name was starting to get more attention than she would like. It wouldn't take much of a brain to know that wasn't her real name. She intended to use it only for her infiltration missions in Raccoon City and the Arklay Mountains. Now that both those places were blown to oblivion, perhaps it was time for her to leave that name amongst their rubble, rotting away with time.

That thought left her with an uneasy feeling as she tried her best to clean herself. Didn't leave her even as she left the bathroom and headed for the full-length mirror in the corner. It was the first time she saw herself since she left for Raccoon City. It was still her in the mirror looking back, albeit with a lot more bruises and bandages. Well, no rest for the weary, she knew it came with her line of work. And her new mission would start in a few days, so no time to dwell over these temporary imperfections, they would heal, and she would be almost as good as new. It was time, however, to do her little ritual. She would be getting rid of her previous alias to take up a new one in between her missions, and she turned it into a little process because fake identities need a lot more than just a new name to be believable; the name stood for an act. She stood in front of her mirror, posture straight and proud like a victorious Valkyrie despite the wound in her leg screaming at her and said:

''Goodbye, Ada Wong''

_**Unknown country, unknown year**_

_She didn't have a name. Not that a name meant anything to her. It stopped to matter the moment her parents died when she was a kid and a group of resistance fighters found her wailing in the house next to their corpses. They brought her back to their base and no, they didn't raise her. No one had time to teach a kid good manners and kid stuff when the world was burning around them. The world was just the constant ear-numbing sound of gunfire and the shaking of their little underground base from the bombs dropped nearby. She hated it when the dirt on the 'ceiling' would fall onto her hair, but she was too busy huddled in a corner with the women waiting for the rumblings to pass to complain about it really. No, they didn't raise her, but they kept her alive, and taught her how to stay alive._

_It was hard to stay alive, she understood that much, and was only proven right again when she was the only survivor of a bomb that hit too close. She clawed her way through the dirt and rubble to reach the surface, fingers bloody, eyes burning with tears from dirt getting in it, not from fear she swore. Fear gets you killed. As she lied there and looked at the bloody corpse of a woman she might have clung onto during one of the bombings, she could only think one thing: they never gave her a name. People mostly called her 'kid', because she was the youngest of the bunch. The man who found her back then did call her 'red' because red was the blood that dyed her pants as she sat next to her parents bleeding bodies. Her random thought was interrupted by a loud growling in her stomach. Staying alive sure is tedious, but she got up anyway._

_From then on it was all she knew. The hunger. Without people in the resistance who brought food to her, she had to find it herself now. The war had gotten much worse, people too, and finding resources was harder than ever. Sometimes her vision just faded and she woke up later only to force herself back up so that she could find food. But she managed. How old she was, she didn't know because calendars were in houses and houses were all burned down._

_Then she met a boy._

_His face held a gauntness she knew too well because it was on her own face too. But those eyes, so bright. He had beautiful eyes, eyes that said he hadn't been in this as long as she had, he was still used to having someone caring for him. He stole her bread. The bread that she got a nasty scratch for, which was still bleeding inside her makeshift bandage. Fueled by a craze born from hunger and desperation, she chased him to an abandoned, half-collapsed house. It was more of a hole than a house. Inside was what would be her undoing, a woman too deep in the clutch of death to be of any use. The boy stopped, as if he didn't even know she was behind him and started feeding the bread to his mother. The stench of the woman's decaying flesh filled her nose, but she was used to it. Ada just stood there, frozen with a shotgun she found earlier in her hands. The boy turned around to face her, relief on his face and had the audacity to suggest that she worked together with him to feed all three of them._

_She refused. The part of her heart that remembered the fighters who took her in screamed in protest, but her stomach was louder. The boy begged and begged, hunger and desperation drenching his words and faith drenching his eyes. He was an idiot, the definition of someone who wouldn't stay alive in her book. To care for someone else when even himself was struggling to survive, that was a sure death sentence. And she was not going to let these people become hers._

_She raised her gun, and those beautiful eyes widen in fear. And fear gets you killed._

_Later on, when she ate the bread, she found out that some blood splattered onto it. It didn't stop her from finishing the whole thing._

_**Raccoon City, 1998**_

"_Hand over the sample Leon. I don't want to hurt you.''_

'"_Then you shoot me, but I don't think you can.''_

_His eyes were beautiful. How she could find them beautiful even at a time like this was beyond her. His eyes were so blue and full of faith. Faith of what? That she wouldn't shoot him? Well, initially it wasn't a possibility, as she had gotten her sample and was going to simply disappear on him after they escaped. But that bitch Annette must have told him all about her and turned him on her. Now she had to get rid of him, for no outsider can know her real mission and live to tell it. _

_Except that Leon was no outsider, not anymore despite her best efforts. He wormed his way into the rational part of her mind and attempted to dig his way into that little corner of her heart that she locked up long ago. She tried to stop him, really. The idiot took a bullet for her. She was about to leave him bleeding on the floor right then and there because Annette, her objective was getting away, but then he told her to do exactly that. He didn't beg her to stay, didn't become her obstacle. Maybe it was reverse psychology that made her stay and patched him up, maybe it was something else she wasn't ready to acknowledge. She didn't know if she would ever be ready._

_Later, he found her surrounded by garbage and bleeding from the nasty wound in her leg. He rushed towards her like she was the last piece of bread in the war (she almost laughed aloud for this ridiculous thought). No, he wouldn't understand even if she explained, because he had never experienced war like she had, and for that he was something precious that she could never touch for fear of tainting him, or him consuming her until she forgot the one thing that kept her alive all this time. So when he gently took her hand and placed it on his shoulder, she pulled it back, said something witty and felt an uncharacteristic tightening in her chest._

_Leon Kennedy was blond, boyishly handsome and soft around the edges. He was in shape, but the uniform was obviously a little too big for his frame. She could imagine him being a scrawny kid in high school. His voice matched his youthful appearance and his words started with concern for others. 'Serve and Protect', he reminded her of his oath back at the gun shop, as if she ever had the luxury of being protected by the system. He was the definition of someone who wouldn't stay alive in her book. But he didn't die. Part of it was because she didn't let him. However, she could see it, something that burned behind the soft kindness in his eyes, something, if nurtured right, could make him dangerous._

_He was like her. A survivor. With his own codes._

_Ada lowered her gun._

_Annette shot hers._

_Her eyes were still on his as he dove for her. His hand gripped her arm in a death grip, and she could tell he was pouring all his strength into it. His eyes were filled with fear, which was not reflected in hers. Fear gets you killed. But wasn't she the one dying here? He might be her undoing, but she wasn't going to let herself be his._

"_Forget it.'' She said_

"_It's not worth it.'' She affirmed him. Because she was not someone worth dying over, no one had ever cared if she died, and she was not letting the only person who did die with her._

_He never let up his grip. His eyes were beautiful even when they were filled with tears._

"_Take care of yourself, Leon.'' So she told him the most genuine thing she had ever said in her entire life and let go._

_She heard him screaming after her as she fell. Gravity was unforgiving and for the tiniest moment, she considered letting it pull her to her death, and then maybe she could have a little rest. However, it only lasted for a fraction of a second. Ada Wong reached for her hook shot._

"Goodbye, Ada Wong.''

She touched the wounds on her leg and shoulder. These were Ada's wounds, her weaknesses, not hers. Ada Wong knew what it felt like to have another person covering her with their own body to save her life. Ada Wong knew what it felt like to have someone offering her a shoulder because she couldn't even walk properly. Ada Wong knew what it felt like to have someone cared about her enough to not let her go, even if it would kill them. Ada Wong knew what it felt like to be _human_. As she said goodbye, she couldn't stop her tears. She hugged herself and leaned against the mirror.

Staring back at her wasn't her reflection, it was Ada Wong's.

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**Note: I made a few changes in canon, but they are very minor. **

**Hope you enjoyed the read 3**


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